by Jonathan Hunt
I have no idea how much fuel a cruise ship uses, nor do I care - what I care about is getting your attention, so hopefully I can, give you advice to help further your preparedness level. You have to admit the title grabbed your eye, which was the intent. Now let's get started.
My fuel storage is small compared the amounts suggested by some other survival blogs and books, no 10,000 gallon diesel storage tanks or resupply trucks at my place. Mine is just some propane tanks and a few five gallon cans.
Don't get me wrong, I'd love to have a huge set-up - unfortunately finances won't allow it.
My cook-stove, refrigerator and water heater all use liquefied petroleum gas (propane). When I bought my trailer it came with two 20lb tanks, which were fine for camping or other recreational use, but for full time occupation they weren't sufficient and were quickly replaced with 100lb tanks.
Used for cooking and refrigeration those tanks will last me about a year - longer if I do most of my cooking outside over an open fire or in my Dutch oven.
I also keep the two 20lb tanks that I replaced full at all times. I should have enough fuel to fire the cook stove and run the fridge for at least a year or more.
Propane is efficient and easy to store in the pressurized tanks supplied by the dealer, but can be extremely dangerous if leaks occur near an ignition source.
I don't know if it's true, but the guy working for the local LP dealer, told me about a man who was unloading one of the 100lb tanks from the back of a pickup truck and was blown to bits as soon when he touched the tank.
He said the tank had been laid on it's side and rolled around in the truck bed during transport, damaging the valve and causing a leak. When the guy took hold of the tank, static electricity from his fingers sparked an explosion killing him and his son.
Like I said, I don't know if this really happened or if it was just a warning from the dealer, but it made me think and become more cautious. Now I wear leather gloves whenever loading or unloading propane.
Propane tanks should be left in the open and not tightly enclosed. I have the 20lb tanks sitting outside on a platform made of concrete block and a half sheet of plywood covered with a tarp.
Gasoline is the hardest fuel to store for an extended length of time. I keep three, five gallon cans, full at all times - 15 gallons doesn't sound like much, but I don't plan on joy riding through town poking fun at those who didn't prepare.
My motivation for storing gasoline is to keep my chainsaws running. If you've ever tried cutting firewood with a crosscut saw you know how important a chainsaw is in your survival preps.
I treat my gasoline with Sta-Bil and rotate every 3-6 months, I don't know how long it would remain viable, but I think six months is a good cutoff period for rotation.
Kerosene and diesel (diesel Sta-Bil) are easy to store and have a longer storage life than does gasoline.
I store kerosene in blue cans and gasoline in red. Mistakenly pouring gasoline into a kerosene heater for instance, could have dire consequences. Following a color coding system helps eliminate this possibility.
The standard fuel container color coding system is blue for kerosene, red for gasoline, and yellow for diesel. I suggest you follow this system.
No doubt some of you have already worked out your fuel storage needs and have planned accordingly - please share what you've learned in the comments below.
Showing posts with label distillation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label distillation. Show all posts
Friday, March 5, 2010
Monday, February 22, 2010
Water During an Emergency
by Jonathan Hunt
In every survival situation, whether you are stuck in a vehicle or your home after an event such as an earthquake or storm occurs, water is essential to your staying alive.
Carrying at least 3 gallons of water in your vehicle is a preferable amount as anyone with enough experience can tell you and is a necessary requirement, not less than that as one would normally believe.
Depending upon where you live in the country will determine just how much water you may actually want to have on hand.
Should you live in Arizona or Utah where the heat can reach excessive temperatures during the day and plummet to below zero temperatures, you will likely lose several pints of water by the time the sun sets and this is without much exertion and therefore you will need the water to keep your body hydrated and stave off heat stroke (hyperthermia) and/or freezing to death (hypothermia).
In desert regions, the sun bakes and therefore it will cook not only your car during the warmer months it will also cook your brain and should you have to change a tire, dig out of a wash or even have to walk for any distance in even mild temperatures to reach help then you will lose enough water through your breathing and sweating that a mere gallon may not or will probably not be enough to keep you hydrated or even rehydrate you if you are already low on water which happens to be the case for many people in the United States.
In other areas that are cooler or, rather, not desert-like the need may still be the same and you should take such factors into consideration. If the conditions are so extreme as to cause a long-term situation of 6 months to several years, then the need to find water would become even greater and you would have to seek other sources for getting water such as the back of a toilet tank, a water pipe, animal waterers and so forth after proper disinfection has taken place.
To disinfect water, you can add 5 or 10 drops of 2% Iodine tincture, depending upon how dirty the water is is how much you will use, the clearer it is the less you need of the tincture, shake it up and then let it sit for 25 to 30 minutes before drinking.
Just make sure that the water you are going to treat does not have chemicals such as those which are placed in the back of a toilet tank that clean the toilet with every flush which means you will have to distill the water instead to prevent drinking down various sorts of deadly chemicals and killing yourself in the process.
If you find the water has been treated with chemicals then you can distill it by placing a pot of water over a heat source and finding a way to extract the rising steam into another container such as a cup in the center of the pan by using a string attached to the center of an upside lid placed atop your cooking vessel or using molded aluminum foil with a string or using other objects which would allow the steam to drain toward an awaiting container which is clean and safe for drinking from.
Should you be in a location where there is enough sun to heat up a jug full of water then you can attach clear tubing to the jug at or near the top, seal around the tube coming out of the container and allow the steam to vent and drip down into another container which is, again, clean and safe for drinking from.
Although some would say that you can drink your own urine, this is not true as it will cause vomiting and the number of impurities in your urine are not to be taken lightly not to mention that urine is acidic and if you have ever experienced or seen the after-effects of urine on human skin you will know that it burns so you will definitely want to avoid drinking it until you have distilled it.
It may seem disgusting or gross to distill urine but all that will come out of urine during distillation is pure, consumable water and to avoid dying from dehydration it would be far wiser to drink the pure contents of distilled urine than to suffer the consequences of wishing that you had.
Also, doing so will also give you enough time to find other sources from which you can replenish what little water you will have left in your body taking into account that your breath and body are going to be giving off or losing moisture every minute and you will be hydrated only so long before you will have to find or make drinking water from one or another sources.
If you were to vomit from drinking your own urine or from impure water then you will lose water and that and diarrhea which comes from certain bugs found in most water are what you want to avoid if at all possible, so remember to distill your water when in doubt or you know that a source should not be ingested.
In every survival situation, whether you are stuck in a vehicle or your home after an event such as an earthquake or storm occurs, water is essential to your staying alive.
Carrying at least 3 gallons of water in your vehicle is a preferable amount as anyone with enough experience can tell you and is a necessary requirement, not less than that as one would normally believe.
Depending upon where you live in the country will determine just how much water you may actually want to have on hand.
Should you live in Arizona or Utah where the heat can reach excessive temperatures during the day and plummet to below zero temperatures, you will likely lose several pints of water by the time the sun sets and this is without much exertion and therefore you will need the water to keep your body hydrated and stave off heat stroke (hyperthermia) and/or freezing to death (hypothermia).
In desert regions, the sun bakes and therefore it will cook not only your car during the warmer months it will also cook your brain and should you have to change a tire, dig out of a wash or even have to walk for any distance in even mild temperatures to reach help then you will lose enough water through your breathing and sweating that a mere gallon may not or will probably not be enough to keep you hydrated or even rehydrate you if you are already low on water which happens to be the case for many people in the United States.
In other areas that are cooler or, rather, not desert-like the need may still be the same and you should take such factors into consideration. If the conditions are so extreme as to cause a long-term situation of 6 months to several years, then the need to find water would become even greater and you would have to seek other sources for getting water such as the back of a toilet tank, a water pipe, animal waterers and so forth after proper disinfection has taken place.
To disinfect water, you can add 5 or 10 drops of 2% Iodine tincture, depending upon how dirty the water is is how much you will use, the clearer it is the less you need of the tincture, shake it up and then let it sit for 25 to 30 minutes before drinking.
Just make sure that the water you are going to treat does not have chemicals such as those which are placed in the back of a toilet tank that clean the toilet with every flush which means you will have to distill the water instead to prevent drinking down various sorts of deadly chemicals and killing yourself in the process.
If you find the water has been treated with chemicals then you can distill it by placing a pot of water over a heat source and finding a way to extract the rising steam into another container such as a cup in the center of the pan by using a string attached to the center of an upside lid placed atop your cooking vessel or using molded aluminum foil with a string or using other objects which would allow the steam to drain toward an awaiting container which is clean and safe for drinking from.
Should you be in a location where there is enough sun to heat up a jug full of water then you can attach clear tubing to the jug at or near the top, seal around the tube coming out of the container and allow the steam to vent and drip down into another container which is, again, clean and safe for drinking from.
Although some would say that you can drink your own urine, this is not true as it will cause vomiting and the number of impurities in your urine are not to be taken lightly not to mention that urine is acidic and if you have ever experienced or seen the after-effects of urine on human skin you will know that it burns so you will definitely want to avoid drinking it until you have distilled it.
It may seem disgusting or gross to distill urine but all that will come out of urine during distillation is pure, consumable water and to avoid dying from dehydration it would be far wiser to drink the pure contents of distilled urine than to suffer the consequences of wishing that you had.
Also, doing so will also give you enough time to find other sources from which you can replenish what little water you will have left in your body taking into account that your breath and body are going to be giving off or losing moisture every minute and you will be hydrated only so long before you will have to find or make drinking water from one or another sources.
If you were to vomit from drinking your own urine or from impure water then you will lose water and that and diarrhea which comes from certain bugs found in most water are what you want to avoid if at all possible, so remember to distill your water when in doubt or you know that a source should not be ingested.
Thursday, December 31, 2009
How to make your own moonshine
The production of moonshine has been a part of American culture since the 19th century, and it continues to intrigue us to this day. Making moonshine is not easy – it requires time and patience. Historically, it also required a secluded stream where bootleggers could secretly produce mass quantities of the potent and illicit alcoholic beverage. The reason for the secretive production was to evade the high taxes on whiskey. Moonshine was bootlegged, and with such high taxes to pay for “legal” liquor, the demand for moonshine was very high. Making and selling bootlegged moonshine was quite profitable, especially during the prohibition movement. On the flip side, though, the penalties were stiff, and law enforcers were eager to shut these operations down. The abundance of moonshine production in the 19th and 20th century has taken place in the South, especially Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia. Moonshine is still popular to this day, although it is illegal because it is not taxed and its production is thought to be somewhat unsanitary in most instances.
There have certainly been reports of health risks associated with drinking Moonshine. Some of the most serious reactions include blindness, ulcers, nerve damage, and paralysis. However, that could be due to the fact that some moonshine makers add dangerous ingredients to their brew, such as paint thinner, bleach, and embalming fluid. Also, since so many moonshine stills are outdoors, insects and even rodents could get into the mixture, causing contamination. If you want to try this Southern spirit for yourself, please be very careful and cautious. Even at its “best,” moonshine is incredibly strong and has a very high concentration of alcohol. With that in mind, here’s how you make moonshine (keep in mind that you will wind up with about 18 gallons of the stuff if you follow this exact recipe… adjust your measurements accordingly):
Before you start, you have to learn the moonshine lingo. A “still” is a metal container used for fermenting and heating the “mash.” The “mash” is the mashed cornmeal that is used to make the moonshine. The “thump” is a water-filled barrel that captures the steam from the mash. The “worm” is a long copper coil that the steam from the thump can run through to cool down and condense. The worm is submerged in the “flakestand,” which is another barrel that is constantly cooled with water. Condensed mixture drips from the flakestand into the “catch,” which could just be a can or jar used to collect the liquor.
Ingredients: 25 lbs. corn meal
, 100 lbs. sugar, 100 gallons water, 6 oz. yeast
Directions: Boil the water. Add cornmeal, and return to a boil. Add yeast and sugar to boiling cornmeal in order to ferment the mash. When the mash stops bubbling, cook it in the still, and capture the steam in the thump. (This is a lot trickier than lemonade, huh?) Let the steam cool and condense through the worm and flakestand. The cooled liquor will drip from the bottom of the flakestand, so make sure you have your catch ready.
As you can see, moonshine is not something you will be able to whip up on a lazy Sunday afternoon. It is a painstaking process that should probably be left to the enthusiasts. Plus, with a proof somewhere between 100 and 200, you wouldn’t remember how to make it a second time anyway.
See these other great websites on how to make your own website. http://www.stillcooker.com/ and http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-make-moonshine
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